Tag Archives: American Gothic

In parts one and two of my exploration of Southern Gothic films, I examined this murky subgenre from its origins in the Pre-Code films of the ‘30s to its explosion in the ‘40s and ‘50s with adaptations of the work ...

“You’ve come a long way, I know, you got a longer drive ahead through the bones of a buffalo, through the claims of the western dead and just like the spokes of a wheel you’ll spin ’round with the rest, ...

It is not surprising that the term ‘American Gothic’ still makes folk automatically think of the more traditional traps of British and European Gothic; moonlit castles, howling wolves, heaving bosoms, pitchfork wielding villagers and Michael Ripper. By contrast, American Gothic ...

Edgar Allen Poe stands as one of the most prominent names regarding classic American horror literature and rightfully so, considering his works The Telltale Heart (1843) and The Raven (1845). Likewise, Washington Irving also stands as a notable name in ...

In the land of the killers, the mother’s boy will be king. That said, it takes a special kind to really stand out. In Irvin Berwick’s 1977 horror-that-could-have-been-ripped- straight-from- the-headlines film, Hitch Hike to Hell, we get a killer and a situation ...

“We thought we were driving South In our late model hearse We had no clue we were headed From bad to worse” “The Vampire Roadtrip” by The Hammerdowns There is something so quintessentially American about road trips. I’m not talking ...

In the first part of my examination of Gothic cinema in the ‘40s, I focused on romantic melodramas and suspense films — such as Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and Secret Beyond the Door — but this loose subgenre only makes up ...

During the 1980’s, the American Satanic Panic epidemic was in full swing.  The previous decade planted the seeds for hysteria concerning the cloven hoofed lord of the abyss and his earthly worshippers; but it wasn’t until allegations of Satanic ritual ...

In many respects, the ‘40s were a strange time for horror films. With a few notable exceptions, like Le main du diable (1943) or Dead of Night (1945), the British and European nations avoided the genre thanks to the preoccupation ...

No American Gothic series would be complete without Edgar Allan Poe, and if we are talking about cinematic adaptations, Roger Corman’s famous “Poe Cycle” deserves a big piece of the spotlight — a series of eight films, made between 1960-1964(5); ...